Posted on 11/25/2005 9:15:48 AM PST by FairOpinion
TOKYO, Nov 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari urged Japan on Friday to keep its troops in southern Iraq, saying an early pullout of coalition forces would lead to more violence by insurgents.
Zebari said his war-torn country had made progress on improving security, but added it faced a crucial period ahead of the Dec. 15 parliamentary election.
"The difficult part has gone in my view. We're very close to reaching a more stable form of government and of security," Zebari told a news conference following a meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
"Now, any premature withdrawal will send the wrong message to the terrorists, to the opposition ... that this coalition is fracturing and running, that their policies and strategies of undermining this process is winning."
He said he could not give a time frame for when the coalition forces would be able to leave Iraq, but added that it would be at least months after the new Iraqi government was formed.
U.S. defence officials said this week that the Pentagon planned to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, currently 155,000, to about 138,000 after next month's election. This could be reduced further to about 100,000 next summer if conditions allowed.
Zebari said Koizumi was aware of the need for the international community to remain committed to Iraq, and added he believed Tokyo would decide in the next "few days or few weeks" on whether to extend the mandate of its troops deployed in Iraq.
Koizumi later told reporters Tokyo would consider what steps it could take to help out the Iraqi people, but did not say whether it would keep its military.
"I would like to continue to think about what kind of aid Japan can provide for Iraq's country-building," Koizumi said.
Japan has sent some 550 ground troops to Samawa in southern Iraq to provide humanitarian and reconstruction aid, but the mission expires on Dec. 14.
While the troops do not take part in operations to maintain security, the deployment is the country's first significant overseas military mission since World War Two.
The dispatch, first approved in 2003, won praise from Washington, but is opposed by the majority of Japanese. In a Mainichi newspaper poll published in October, 77 percent of those surveyed said they were opposed to an extension.
The Asahi newspaper reported this month that Japan was considering withdrawing its troops from Iraq starting from the first half of next year and completing the process by September.
Which is exactly why the America haters and leftists want us to pull out, to create a self fulfilling prophesy of the Iraq war "quagmire". They know that if we stay, we WILL win, Iraq and us will emerge victorious, proving that President Bush was right, so they want us to pull out before we achieve victory.
Al Qaeda and the leftists want all the nations supporting us to pull out, forcing us to pull out as well.
I hope our coalition partners will stay the course and not give in to Al Qaeda's and terrorist lovers' demands to withdraw.
"Now, any premature withdrawal will send the wrong message to the terrorists, to the opposition ... that this coalition is fracturing and running, that their policies and strategies of undermining this process is winning."
Iraq says pullout of forces will lead to violence
Thank God there isn't any now.
"would lead to MORE violence" says the article, it just wasn't captured in the title.
But you certainly should get the point. Now, the violence is in its last stretch -- they weren't able to prevent people voting. We are about to turn the corner, showing that despite the violence, there is progress.
Pulling out would be SURRENDER plain and simple and the terrorists would turn Iraq into a terrorist base, as they did with Afghanistan, until we liberated that country.
I think it was Laz who once had a tagline about proudly posting without reading the article?
I should have it as mine sometimes.
We ARE winning, in fact, we've made much more progress than you'd know if you only watch or read MSM. Right now, the Sunni "insurgents" are asking for talks; we've turned over a number of our bases to the Iraqi (non-insurgent) forces; we've probably detained or killed more than half of the insurgent forces--just for starters. THIS is why the sudden frenzy of calls for withdrawal from the likes of Murtha, Kennedy and others.
"THIS is why the sudden frenzy of calls for withdrawal from the likes of Murtha, Kennedy and others."
==
That's right. Otherwise our victory will be so obvious, the MSM will HAVE to report it, and it will be just before the 2006 election, when it will be obvious to everyone that President Bush not only had a strategy, but a winning strategy all along. The Dems are terrified of this, so they try to do everything to derail our victory, never mind, what that will mean to our security.
Notice the headline writer changed "would" to "will", implying that a pullout is a done deal. Bias, or just poor language skills?
The Iraqis have been stepping up, the big operation near the Syrian border was a joint operation between coalition forces and Iraqi forces.
But things don't happen overnight. Communism has collapsed in Europe and Soviet Union some 15 years ago, and there are still serious problems they are working through.
It is our own self interest -- and I wish people would point this out more often -- to create a stable Iraq, as a democratic beacon for the Middle East, instead of leaving, as we did in Afghanistan years ago, and the terrorists filled the vacuum.
You're either watching too much of the MSM pap, or not paying attention. The Iraqis ARE stepping up to the plate. The main reason we're catching and killing so many of the bad guys is because the Iraqis are ratting them out. The ones who aren't ratted out are now asking for talks.
If the Iraqis took over 100% of their national defense today, it will have taken a very long time.
You don't remember much about WWII, do you?
From the article; "Zebari said his war-torn country had made progress on improving security,"??? Should that not read "terrorist-torn"???
Only if you have the attention span of a gnat.
Nope, WWII was over for 20 years before I was even born. I suppose the French "stepped up to the plate" in the bottom of the ninth after we ran up the score 20 zip for them, so the Iraqis followed that game plan.
Yep. The left is trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
For sure. They have had two whole years to build, train and equip an army and a police force from scratch to govern a country with only tens of millions of inhabitants, and less than 10% of them are really really bad guys who blow things up. Plus, the only interference in building the police and army was assasination of police and Army recruits by the bad guys. For God's sake, what is taking the Iraqi's so long? This would have been so easy were you in charge.
The so called insurgents didn't take long to figure out how to fight the most powerful nation on the planet.
Running a terrorist operation is at least as difficult as building an army and a police force and a nation from scratch. So your statement makes perfect sense.
When local residents provide information on where terrorists are hiding their weapons, Iraqi and American forces are quick to respond.
An anonymous tip prompted Iraqi soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, 6th Iraqi Army Division and U.S. forces from D Company, 1st Battalion, 87th Infantry to conduct searches in west Baghdad Nov. 20-21.
Fair Opinion, thought you might appreciate this story.
Milemark, here's some proof that the Iraqis are stepping up to the plate. Don't be so impatient. It took us a number of years to weed out all the "insurgents" from German-occupied Europe and Japanese-occupied areas in the Pacific. I'm old enough to remember a good deal of it, but even if you're a youngster, you can hit the history books. We didn't win WWII overnight, and we didn't put Europe and the countries and islands in the Pacific back together in a year.
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